Friday, April 2, 2010

TGIF

Thank Goodness It's Friday! I have the day off today and I'm on call tomorrow, and I'm really praying that nobody needs surgery tomorrow. I know that's unlikely, but can you imagine being in the hospital Easter weekend? I don't wish that on anyone.

This has been a very busy week. I worked, of course, but during all of my normal down-time I helped with interviews for the new class of student nurse anesthetists. That was an eye-opening experience! I had no idea how much work went into it.

All of the candidates send in their files - transcripts, work histories, application essays, and various other items. Each item is given a numerical score. All of those numerical scores are tallied up and the top forty or so candidates are invited for an interview.

Then the interview takes place. We ask a series of questions and each answer gets a numerical score. These scores are tallied with the pre-interview scores and we come up with the top fifteen candidates, who are then invited to join the program. I've simplified this here, because the process actually took several weeks and involved some discussion/debate - each faculty member had different ideas about what makes the perfect candidate!

We had a really great group of applicants this time. We honestly could have taken anybody in the top thirty or so, and had a strong class. This makes it difficult, because sometimes the thing that separates one candidate from another is simply a few points on a test. I really hope that some of the folks who didn't get in this year will be persistent enough to re-apply next year, because I really liked so many of them!

And, essentially, I've taken on a second job with this faculty thing. I'm excited about it - I love working with students and I love to teach and I think I can be good at it, but we'll see. For the moment, I have the day off and there's a chicken coop to clean and garden beds to build and I really ought to muck out the pastures. My pretty suit is hanging in the closet and today's uniform is old jeans and a t-shirt. Have a great weekend, everyone!

Thistledew Farm

As Clay Hill is only a tiny division of Thistledew :), it is appropriate to give you the link to our sister site, here: http://thistledewfarm.blogspot.com/. There you'll find another perspective on our adventures!